The new version of the software learned to grow muscles, shrink tissues and react to water and wind.
The new version of the software learned to grow muscles, shrink tissues and react to water and wind.
Ziva Dynamics released a major update to its character creation Maya plugin Ziva VFX 1.4. The software adds five new tools for production artists. The developers considered feedback from Sony Pictures Imageworks and Scanline VFX to helps creators apply real-world physics to even more parts of the character creation process: muscle growth, tissue tension and natural elements (winds, water).
If you haven’t heard about it before, Ziva plugin combines the effects of real-world physics and helps to rapidly create soft-tissue materials like muscles, fat and skin. Software users can produce CG characters “that move, flex and jiggle just as they would in real life”. This makes rigging so much easier.
The External Forces feature now allows users to accurately simulate how natural elements like wind and water interact with their characters. Pressure and Surface Tension properties allow to “fit” fat tissues around muscles, augmenting the standard Ziva VFX anatomy tools.
Muscle Growth technology can help you quickly increase the overall muscle definition of a character or body part without having to remodel the geometry. Rest Scale for Tissue feature lets users grow or shrink a tissue object equally in all directions.
Let’s not forget Ziva Scene Panel, which helps to visualize work in an effortless, compact way. Ziva Scene Panel’s tree-like structure shows all connections and relationships between an asset’s objects, functions and layers, making it easier to find specific items and nodes within a Maya scene file.
You can actually try this tool for free with a 60-day trial. You can purchase the software here (it’s pretty cheap for indies).